Health care and education for Indian villages

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About us

We believe that everyone has a right
to basic health care and education.

Amar Lata focuses it’s efforts on remote Indian villages and works together with specialised organisations and the local community to set up and sustain the infrastructure, expertise and financial framework to raise health awareness, provide a range of primary healthcare services and improve access to education for the village people.

We do not bring in ready-made solutions from outside, but have an intimate knowledge of the local culture and customs, enabling us to initiate sustainable change in a way that people can understand, accept and embrace.

Our story

Around 1975, in the remote West Bengali village of Gadaibalbarh, near Nandigram and 170 km from Kolkata, Amar and Snehalata Ball founded the first school for small children in their name: the Amar Lata Primary School. Having never been to school herself and married at the age of 14, Snehelata believed strongly that only education could pave the way towards individual independence and emancipation – especially for women.

In the same spirit, she also established a village women’s society and a scholarship in a nearby secondary school. Snehelata Ball died in 1986 and with it began the search for the best use of the family property.

In 2002, the second son of Amar and Lata Ball – Ajoy Kumar – decided together with his five brothers to continue in the spirit of their parents.

The new initiative met with an instant and overwhelming demand from the villagers, most of whom had never seen a doctor or eye specialist before. While greatly encouraged by the results of the projects, this only showed how much more there is to achieve in this remote and empoverished region.

The Amar Lata Gramin Seva Foundation was founded in 2004 and the Gadaibalbarh Primary Health Care Centre was registered as a charity.

Around that time, the Ball family also made land in another deprived rural region – Baller Bazar in the Sunderbans (Ganges Delta) – available to a similar health project. Activities there began in 2005 with the sinking of a deep tube well in the market place to provide fresh drinking water to the community.